CHARVEL PRO-MOD DK22 SSS 2PT CM

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GUITARIST AUGUST 2020

first play

CHARVEL PRO-MOD DK22

SSS 2PT CM

£949

WHAT IS IT? An affordable

mash-up of modern feel and

classic tones in Charvel style

ome electric guitars come with baggage.

There’s a ‘reputation’. Unfair as it may

seem, guitars can be judged on the

company they keep. We look them up and

down and instantly decide whether or not we

want anything to do with these characters.

Gretsch? Easy. Rockabilly throwbacks. Next.

Rickenbacker? Lovable mop tops. Jingle

jangle. End of. And what of the Charvel

Pro-Mod DK22 minding its own business

on this page? C’mon, you’d have to be some

bearded slab of tattooed meat to bother

shredding on one of those things. Right?

Imagine for a second you got this six-string

Goldilocks all wrong. Maybe it isn’t just for

those who only got a clean sound that one

time the battery in their metal pedal fizzled

out. With some gentle persuasion on our part

you might even begin to regard this guitar as

a perfect contemporary interpretation of the

Fender Stratocaster. Yeah, we went there.

We just need to back it up.

Let’s begin by breaking down that model

designation. ‘Pro-Mod’ signifies this guitar is a

member of Charvel’s affordable Mexican-built

range. ‘DK’ refers to the Dinky body shape,

basically a slightly scaled-down Strat-style

design, while ‘22’ equals the number of jumbo

frets. ‘SSS’ means you get three single-coil-

sized pickups and ‘2PT’ points to the two

Words Ed Mitchell Photography Neil Godwin

Nevermind the shredders, this hard-rocker

from Mexico has enough vintage tone to pull

bluesers and country pickers into the world of

compound radii and floating whammies…

Skin Deep

Nevermind the shredders, this hard-rocker

from Mexico has enough vintage tone to pull

bluesers and country pickers into the world of

compound radii and floating whammies…

Skin Deep

GIT461.rev_charvel.indd 10 11/06/2020 09:41

Summary of content (5 pages)

PAGE 1
f i r st p l ay CHARVEL PRO-MOD DK22 SSS 2PT CM £949 WHAT IS IT? An affordable mash-up of modern feel and classic tones in Charvel style Skin Deep Nevermind the shredders, this hard-rocker from Mexico has enough vintage tone to pull bluesers and country pickers into the world of compound radii and floating whammies… Words Ed Mitchell Photography Neil Godwin S ome electric guitars come with baggage. There’s a ‘reputation’. Unfair as it may seem, guitars can be judged on the company they keep.
PAGE 2
AUGUST 2020 GUITARIST GIT461.rev_charvel.
PAGE 3
first play CHARVEL PRO-MOD DK22 SSS 2PT CM 2 1 1. Charvel’s die-cast locking tuners provide faultless tuning stability 2. Our DK22 maple neck is caramelised, a process that involves baking the maple to help it resist changes in temperature and humidity Rolled fingerboard edges and the compound radius mean you almost feel like the guitar is playing itself 12 pivot point recessed Gotoh Custom 510 vibrato unit. Finally, ‘CM’ is shorthand for the 648mm (25.5-inch) scale caramelised maple neck.
PAGE 4
CHARVEL PRO-MOD DK22 SSS 2PT CM first play 3 ’heads provides faultless tuning stability. The slippery Graph Tech Tusq XL top nut helps out, too. Before we plug in, there’s the electrical stuff to contend with. The DK22 is a SSS format guitar. In actual fact, it has two regular single coils and a single-coilsized humbucker. The bridge pickup is a Seymour Duncan SHR-1B Custom Hot Rails humbucker. The middle unit is a Seymour Duncan SSL-6 Flat Strat single coil.
PAGE 5
first play CHARVEL PRO-MOD DK22 SSS 2PT CM CHARVEL PRO-MOD DK22 SSS 2PT CM There’s no shred-friendly double-locking Floyd Rose vibrato here. Instead, you get a recessed Gotoh Custom 510 unit. This vibrato comes paired with a set of locking machineheads and a slippery Graph Tech top nut. The result is faultless tuning stability It can’t be pigeonholed as just another shredding machine, even if that’s Charvel’s target market SHR-1B Custom Hot Rails humbucker, both coils engaged.